


make heaven of hell, a hell of heaven

by hypraeteia



Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: But like... hot Satan, Cant resist some Greek myth apparently, F/M, I also write sexy dreams a lot, Inspired by Eros and Psyche (Ancient Greek Religion & Lore), Kylo Ren is Satan, Mentions of previous partner violence, Milton would be proud of me, Reallllllly hot Satan, Rey became a nun to escape shit husband, Rey is a nun, mentions of previous rape
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-02-11
Updated: 2020-03-25
Packaged: 2021-02-28 05:41:46
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,903
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22658731
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hypraeteia/pseuds/hypraeteia
Summary: Hope not ever to see Heaven. I have come to lead you to the other shore; into eternal darkness; into fire and into ice. -Dante AlighieriHe would come to her at night, long after Rey and her sisters had muttered their prayers on cold stone floors. Her lonesome bed had become a place of fear, like a child afraid of monsters. She laid awake until the early hours, when his encroaching presence preceded the dawn. A being in the darkness, invisible to everyone but her.
Relationships: Kylo Ren/Rey, Rey & Ben Solo | Kylo Ren, Rey/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren
Comments: 9
Kudos: 61





	1. Chapter 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This fic was inspired by @targbensolo’s tweet: 
> 
> https://twitter.com/targbensolo/status/1226136280599318533?s=21

He would come to her at night, long after Rey and her sisters had muttered their prayers on cold stone floors. 

Her lonesome bed had become a place of fear, like a child afraid of monsters. She laid awake until the early hours, when his encroaching presence preceded the dawn. A being in the darkness, invisible to everyone but her. The air grew cold, icy tendrils searching for bare skin underneath her blankets. Night after night, she gripped them like the coarse linen could hide her from the unnatural prickling on her skin. She never saw him, but she _knew_ he was there with the certainty of one facing death. Her throat grew tight with fear, and she felt frozen, prey caught in the line of sight of its hunter’s bow. 

Nothing had ever come of it. She was trapped in the certainty he was there, watching her, that _something _would happen, malice filling the air like poison.__

____

____

It was pitiful that he terrified her so.

At first she suspected she had gone mad, like the girls with more sordid stories than hers. One of her sisters, whose husband had maimed her leg past saving, had awoken screaming every night after she drifted off, caught in memories. 

Rey had refrained from such demonstrations so far, merely holding her breath as her heart hammered in her ears until dawn would break. Prayers had always felt empty to her, they had done her little service in life, but she had begun to mutter them with new conviction. Prayers had not saved her from a cruel family, nor from them bartering her off to a brute of a husband, but perhaps they would save her from this terror of an invisible stranger. 

When the morning broke, her sisters quietly rousing around her and the sun sweeping through their modest room in salvation, she could finally let her breath return to normal. Her limbs felt stiff, her head was splitting with tension, and she felt nearly delirious with lack of rest.

As she pulled her habit over her night dress, Rose, her closest companion at the convent, studied her face with concern. “Did you sleep at all last night?”

She shook her head, growing uncomfortable with the attention. “Nightmares,” she muttered, hoping to dispel Rose’s concern. Unfortunately, it did no such thing. Rose stumbled nearer to her bed, picking up Rey’s veil from her chair in her approach.

“About your husband?” Rose muttered in an attempt at privacy, her fingers adeptly beginning to situate Rey’s veil for her, brushing her hair under her white cap. Rose had been here longer than she, and therefore had more practice with the regalia.

Rey’s lips tightened. In truth, she hadn’t spared a thought for her husband since she had escaped to the convent, a solitary reprieve from a life of misery thus far. Her life as a wife had been more materially comfortable than the poverty of her childhood, and Rey had grown accustomed to being prepped and considered like a rather expensive portrait or pet, her hair braided, jewels adorned.

She had hated it. But her husband’s regular punishment for the most mild of infractions had been what made it truly intolerable. After all, she had been bought to be considered, used, and _obedient_.

The memory of being preened over bade her to brush Rose’s hands away, which she begged forgiveness for with a soft smile.

She was only trying to help.

“No,” Rey said. “Not my husband.” She bit back the truth of it. She could not repeat her fear without feeling childish. 

She managed a wane smile for her friend, in reassurance.

Rose leaned toward her conspiratorially, voice dropping to a whisper. “I’ll cover your chores in the evening so you can get some sleep.” 

This time, Rey’s smile was genuine. 

They beared the morning together, earlier than the others as a result of their shared efforts in dressing. Rey would have fallen asleep during morning service if not for Rose’s gentle nudging. Exhaustion was beginning to creep over her in consuming waves, nearly as heavy as her nightly terror.

Rey’s continually drooping eyelids to the drone of the priest convinced her that Rose’s offer was a sorely needed one. She doubted she would be able to make it through the day without falling asleep during prayer or the time she and the other sisters devoted to the orphans of the nearest town without rest. She had been haunted for weeks, each night only sleeping a few hours, if at all.

It could not continue.

After they were dismissed, Rey tried to brush off her exhaustion when she reached the cloister of the abbey, which had always stunned her with its quiet beauty. The iterative stone arches cast marbled light and shadow on the floor of their hallways, the chitter of birds breaking through from the garden.

Rey kissed Rose in a goodbye and thanks, escaping through the garden to the grove behind the abbey that laid close enough for enjoyment but distant enough for privacy.

It was beautiful outside, warm, the morning dewiness keeping the heat of the afternoon at bay. The sun on her face felt delicious, and when she reached the circle of trees and underbrush she pulled away her more restricting clothes with hurried fingers, letting the breeze kiss the skin of her neck and move through her hair with a pleasure that her reformed asceticism again associated with luxury.

She couldn’t be caught like this, except for by Rose or one of the more rebellious girls, but she was far enough from the abbey to feel at ease.

Laying in the grass and shrubbery made her feel like a child again, enjoying whatever simple pleasures she could take in a life of drudgery and loneliness. In her adult years, living with her husband until she could bear it no longer, any pleasure had felt like ash in her mouth. Her life in the abbey felt the finest she had had, lonesome as it was.

She had Paige and Rose, who had quickly taken her under their wing when she had arrived, desperate for any refuge from her new life of tormenting aristocracy. 

Sometimes even the priests’ voice, raised in an effort to project to her sisters, made her wince.

The sun was quickly beginning to break through the coolness of the morning, but Rey didn’t mind. The warmth beating down from the treetops covered her like a blanket, and she lifted her now-loose skirts to allow her bare calves to be kissed by blades of grass and sunlight. 

Sleep found her quickly, as gentle as a lover, its heaviness overtaking her as birds continued to chitter softly, the breeze growing soothing.

* 

The man retained that hazy anonymity she associated with dreams, a vague recognition that would be chased away as soon as she awoke, when she would only remember raven hair and a teasing, long nose. 

He kissed her where the breeze had, his roaming lips and tongue just as cool and soothing as it found her thighs and neck.

Absently, she wondered how she could dream of such things. She had heard enough stories from eager new maids in her husband’s home, but he had always been gruff and punishing in his nightly visits, as impersonal as fucking his own hand. 

This lover seemed to savor her, his hands roaming to palm at bare thighs and wrap around her throat. She moaned and squirmed into the grass, her hands tangling in his curls, gentle tugging eliciting a low groan from him against her neck. The sound sent a creeping pleasure through her, stoking the licks of heat growing in her belly.

The desperateness of it felt unfamiliar, but her body moved of its own accord, seemingly knowing. Her legs parted for him as her dress slid higher, her body arching into his as his mouth found her ear. 

His roaming hands and lapping tongue elicited little cries from her that seemed to encourage him, and his hand found her sex as his mouth found hers. 

He tasted like the fruit her family grew on in a tree in her backyard, like she was young and loved again. His mouth was soft and grew hungry with hers, tongues moving in tandem, searching, allowing her breath to grow more ragged.

She could feel how wet she was as his hands gently circled her folds, and he let out another low moan when his fingers delved inside her. 

Her gasp broke their kiss, the feeling of fullness enjoyable rather than painful. The pressure felt delicious, and when he pushed inside her again she felt wholly consumed by the flame he had started. 

“ _More_ ,” she whimpered, grasping his shoulders, desperate for something she did not know the name of.

She felt rather than saw his hunger, a grin pressed against her neck as his mouth laved at the bare skin there. 

When his thumb returned to her folds, his fingers still continuing to pump in and out of her, her exclamation sounded nearly one of pain.

She felt trapped by him, her body desperate, prey to his caresses that turned her gentle and pliant. Her body easily accepted what he gave her, the sounds of her wetness and moans growing more uninhibited with every searching push by his hand.

The waves of pleasure building made her terrified, like she was falling, rapidly approaching some uncertain destination without control. She could feel her mind attempting to stop it, fearing the unknown, desperate for some semblance of autonomy.

He seemed to sense it, his displeasure nearly palatable to her. 

“No,” he murmured, his voice low and smooth. “Let go.” 

His voice was confident, knowing. His fingers grew firmer, more insistent, until the sensations broke like a wave, her body suspended in the pleasure he had created for her. 

He bit the skin of her neck as her body convulsed around his fingers, and Rey awoke with a cry.

The change in light was disorienting, no longer the glow of the morning but the scorching glare of noon. Everything was too bright, her eyes sensitive with the remnants of sleep, and the air held a familiar sort of darkness, made acidic and bitter with the presence of light and life. 

The lingering pleasure of her dream was chased away with dawning horror. She could feel the remnants of his presence like the sun that was now beginning to burn, the pleasure it had brought her earlier now twisted and scorching. 

Perhaps it was the fact that her body was still smoldering from her dream, perhaps it was the cover of daylight, but her instinct now was the opposite of her nightly cowering. She needed to _act_ , to _move_. With an absence of a source of her fear and therefore a target for her resistance, she broke out into a run. She barely managed to retrieve her discarded clothes from the ground in her dash for the treeline. For a moment, the feeling of being chased felt like chasing. She dashed through biting underbrush, her body revelling in the movement, muscles contracting with bursts of energy as she brought herself closer and closer to comfort. When she broke into the peripheral garden of the abbey, the _wrongness _of her surroundings quickly dissipated.__

____

____

A kind of melancholy quickly overtook her.

She swallowed it bitterly as she wandered through the abbey, searching. It was accompanied with a burning curiosity that she knew had to be satisfied.

She found a spare candle in the rooms dedicated to copying manuscripts. She clutched its waxy body underneath her robes in determination as she went to hide it in the box she kept underneath her bed.

Tonight she would see the source of her torment.


	2. Chapter 2

The hallways of the abbey were eerily quiet as the rest of the priory went about their chores. From the angle of the light streaming in through the windows, Rey suspected anyone who had finished would be eating, and that she would have several minutes to hide the candle she had smuggled under her robes. 

Its body grew tacky from her warmth as she smoothed callused fingertips on the wax. Her footsteps echoed loudly on the floors, steady clacking reverberating on stone archways. 

She had nearly reached her room when she was surprised by the prioress, rounding the corner. 

Her startled inhale gave her away. Rey had never been a particularly nervous person, even living with her horror of a husband, but the sleep deprivation and recent torment from her nightly visitor had put her on edge. 

The stern lines of the older woman studied her cooly, expectant. 

“Sister,” Rey murmured, head bowing in greeting. She held her breath until she could not refrain from allowing her eyes to drift back to the prioress’ face. 

She gripped her candle tighter as the prioress stepped closer.

“Your habit is dirty,” she finally said, eyes roaming and shrewd. “Your veil is half-on, and you’re flushed.” She let the implication hang in the air, and Rey stayed silent. She could still feel the wetness between her legs from her dream. A quiet, dreadful lover. 

“Where were you all morning?” She finally finished, her tone indicating that Rey’s hollow trial had been delivered and judged in the space of a few empty queeries.

She could nearly trace every line in her mind's eye of Rose’s sweet face as she would lie for her, but she could hardly expect her other sisters to. She settled for the truth, knowing it would sound empty to ears already expecting her confession. 

“I’ve been having trouble sleeping, Sister. I snuck away during chores to sleep in the clearing.” She kept her head low, studying the worn, scattered stone tiles. 

Several quiet, uncomfortable moments passed before the prioress cleared her throat. “God knows your sins. Your soul is none of my concern if you’re whoring with some villager. But you’ll attend chores and contribute to the abbey when it is needed.”

Rey breathed in short bursts through her nose, still studying the tiles, knowing what was coming. 

The prioress turned, gesturing. “Come.” 

The whip that the prioress recovered from a little box in her study looked rarely used, the leather knots still shiny and unstained. The prioress herself looked comparatively more familiar with this ritual, although perhaps not as familiar as Rey herself. She had never seen this whip before though; her husband favored silk cords and flat planks that would either sting and ache or leave motley colored bruises, never scars. 

She undressed silently, clammy palms finding the grain of the desk with resignation. When the beaded leather stung her back, her breath left her all at once. She refused to cry out, it was better to get it over with as smoothly as possible, and she felt her mind start to descend into that place she had sworn she had left behind when she had escaped to the convent. It wasn’t gone, neither the pain or that blank acceptance within herself, just lurking underneath, ready for her to slip into it when necessary. 

Rey didn’t know how many lashes she received by the time the prioress had finished. Time and sensation felt slippery in the state she was in, but judging by the amount of blood she felt on her skin, it was nothing undue. Her back would likely feel better by morning.

She redressed stoically, wincing only slightly as her shift settled. When she turned to face the prioress, waiting to be dismissed, she found her seeming rather agitated. 

The prioress’ arms were crossed, her breath coming in shallow huffs, the whip laying untended on the box she had recovered it from. 

Rey merely waited, and as the prioress’ breath began to slow, she settled herself into her chair, studying her. 

“You have the devil about you, girl.”

Her lips pursed when Rey failed to give her a response, unable to muster any anger. When she finally waved her out, she looked resigned. 

**

Rey felt leaden as she went about her afternoon, muttering in Latin during afternoon service with blood-soaked layers of linen falling on open wounds. Rose could tell something was off when she greeted her during supper, but Rey brushed it off with easy smiles and gratitude for a stolen morning. Her exhaustion was better at least, and she was able to refrain her eyes from drooping until the evening service. 

After the priest and the rest of her sisters had left, she and Rose remained, kneeling. 

The crucifix at the altar reigned humbly. The image felt loud. 

“Do you believe in all this?” Rey asked, eyes transfixed. 

She felt, rather than saw Rose’s confusion. Mercifully, there was no judgment. And no answer either.

Rey truly loved her. 

**

She was the last of her sisters to retire to their room, despite her exhaustion. Her anticipation had sharpened her weariness to a dull ache in her muscles, her mind no longer foggy. 

They had left their window open. The night air wafting in would have been comforting before her nightmares began. Now she longed for suffocating warmth and containment, safe from whatever monsters might creep into her erstwhile comfort.

She didn’t know how long her candle would last. She tried to stay awake as long as she could before she lit it, carrying it across the long room to her darkened corner where she slept next to Rose. It felt like the way her other sisters held their crucifix, a lifeline and a weapon. For the first time, she understood the comfort that it gave them. 

She was nearly giddy as she settled underneath her bedding, counting her breaths as she stared up at the ceiling. The candle flame cast flickering shadows on the beams, the breeze from the window making it dance in arrhythmic sputters. 

She waited. Counting her breaths.

Nothing. 

She wasn’t sure if she had fallen asleep when it happened. Like dipping her toes into too hot water, when the pain of the heat registers as iciness, her surroundings around her distorted and shifted into reality all at once. 

They were alone, in the room previously filled with her sisters’ rows of beds. 

He was staring down at her, curious, from the foot of hers, familiar and alien all at once. A dream made flesh. Or a nightmare. Dark curls and a plush, pouting mouth that stood in contrast to his pallor. 

She felt a flicker of foolishness for the candle. He clearly wanted to be seen. Her waxy savior felt feeble to his shadow.

She spoke before he had the chance. 

“I’m not dreaming, am I?” It was more a statement than a question. Their meeting held none of the haziness that her dream had; it was sharp, too clear, the strangeness of the emptiness of the room loud and alarming. 

In dreams, the odd was often unremarkable. 

“No,” he answered, low and somehow comforting. Unlike his features, his voice was familiar, and she felt her body respond to it, traitorous and yearning. Her fear of him only nearly dampened the familiar heat in her stomach. If he noticed, he gave no other indication than a slight twitch of his lips, twisted and deliciously teasing. 

She felt a new fear blossoming in her, intertwining with her fear of him. What did it say about her, that her body longed for him so?

He seemed completely content to haunt her bedside, and so she was the one to edge out a second question, her voice coming out breathless and soft despite her best efforts. “What do you want?”

Instead of a quick reply, he only considered her for a moment. His gaze felt dissecting, nearly clinical. A mask of impartiality. 

“Why are you here?” He finally replied, voice still low and cool.

For a moment, she could not understand his meaning. When she realized he meant the convent, he had already begun to speak again.

“ _I’m_ here before you, and yet you still doubt God,” he murmured, eyes roaming over her bare shoulders and flimsy linen. “A bride twice-over, one to man and one to him, flaunting vows with abandon.” 

When she winced at the mention of her husband, she thought his face softened. 

“Perhaps they don’t deserve your loyalty.”

The consolation made her defiant, nearly foolish. Despite her fear of him, he was not what she expected. 

“And you do his bidding then? _The Great Deceiver_?” She used the title mockingly, relishing that which she knew of him from the verses she had listened to her entire life. 

His face was impassive as ever, but she thought she could see a touch of petulance in the twist of his mouth. 

“I’m my own master.” As if to prove his words he continued, “And I’ve been given many names. But I use the only one I’ve ever given myself.”

He did not supply it for her. 

She sniffed, suddenly growing more brazen. “What kind of devil spends time avenging broken vows to his enemies?” 

The words tumbled at first, withering into something more cautious as she saw his eyes flash and features turn predatory. 

They stood in silence for a moment, both of them seeming to consider the audacity of her comment. She could feel the blood drain from her face. 

His was impassive as ever as he rounded the foot of her bed, finally deigning to move from the zenith, wandering into her world. 

She wouldn’t let him. She stumbled out of her bedding, her outstretched arm finding the cool stone of the wall behind her, searching for something she could strike him with if she needed to. The unyielding rock felt like a funeral bed as he strode forward, unbothered.

He stopped an inch from her, his eyes lingering on her collarbone. She could feel his breath brush against her cheek. 

She had seen a calf devoured by a wolf once. A fighter until its jaws closed around her throat. Only a single column of blood escaped her wound, but she gave into her capture with a kind of resignation that haunted Rey for weeks afterward. The calf’s resignation made the wolf seem almost gentle.

Rey’s own fear and longing made her eyes flutter shut. Would she really go as willingingly?

His breath continued a steady putter on her cheek until she was sure his teeth would not close over her neck. When she finally looked up at him, he was studying her face with nearly all the uncertainty that she felt. 

When his eyes fell again to her collarbone, they were met by his gloved hand, closing over the crucifix all her sisters wore around their neck. 

The leather only nearly felt like skin as it brushed hers. He tugged the chain off with a finality that made protests die in her throat. 

When he turned, gesturing to leave her, she managed. 

“What is it then?”

He turned to look at her with a single raised eyebrow, seeming to be surprised both by her query and the fact that she managed one. 

“The name you gave yourself,” she finished.

Her little candle and the distant glow of the fire made it hard to ascertain, but she thought she saw his mouth turn up into a weary smirk. 

“Kylo,” he said before he disappeared, suddenly absent at the return of her sisters. 

She remained, clutching the walls, feeling entirely alone.


End file.
